Can I Ask That – Part Twenty Four – Baptism
1 Corinthians 12:13
New International Version (NIV)
“We were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body.”
Read Ezekiel 36:25-27, Joel 2:28-29, Romans 6:1-4, and Titus 3:4-5
Baptism – Through baptism, God marks us as his own. Baptism can lead to faith, or one can receive baptism by faith.
Baptism is one of the primary ways of opening our lives to God’s grace. It is hard to overstate the importance of baptism. It is so fundamental that one can find almost no Christian community that does not practice and perform baptism in some form. And yet, baptism is a practice over which Christians are deeply divided. I think the divisions are unnecessary and sadden the heart of God.
Of all the spiritual practices of Christian people, baptism is one of the only two which all Christians consider sacraments or ordinances of the Lord. Baptism, along with Holy Communion, holds a place of privilege, as being among the most important of spiritual practices. That is why we are going to spend a whole essay/sermon on it.
Who is the primary actor? You can quickly grasp the reasons Christians have disagreements over baptism by asking and answering this question. Who is the principal actor? In other words, in the act of baptism, who is the subject? If you have forgotten fifth-grade grammar, the subject of the sentence performs the action. The direct and indirect objects are acted upon or receive the action. So in the act of baptism, who is the active subject?
Answering this question helps you to understand what it is about baptism that divides Christians. Different Christian communities offer different answers to this question.
I heard one of my favorite preachers speak on the topic of baptism. He comes from a different tradition and answers this question differently than I do. In his sermon, he talked about all that Jesus has done for us. He reminded his congregation about God’s great love and the sacrifice Jesus made for us. So far, so good.
He concluded his sermon by saying something like this: “And, after all that Jesus has done for you, isn’t baptism the least we can do for him?” That is where his tradition differs from mine. He thinks that the person receiving baptism is the primary actor. He also believes that when you or I receive baptism, we are doing something for God.
Notice that even he and his tradition cannot find a way to form their verbs so that they conform to their teachings about baptism. They still say, “get baptized,” “being baptized,” and “receive baptism.” All three phrases use passive verbs and imply that the baptismal candidate is either the direct or indirect object. So who is the subject doing the action?
Methodists would say that God is the subject. Baptism is not something we do for God. Baptism is something God does for us. No one can baptize themselves. Baptism is his gift to us, and we are always the recipient.
Let me give you the historical background of this idea. In the ancient world, before Christ, many gentiles sought to convert to Judaism. Judaism provided moral clarity along with a compelling belief in one God. That is why so many gentiles found Judaism an attractive alternative to paganism.
The process of converting to Judaism was rather long. Converting to Judaism required a complete change of lifestyle, including a strong commitment to learning and obeying the Torah, and integrating into the Jewish community. One of the last steps taken was a ceremonial bath in which the convert washed, as a symbol of washing away his or her sinful past.
Then, around 29 A.D, something radical occurred that changed the whole meaning of this ritual. A wild man, known for his holiness, showed up in the wilderness outside of Judea. He preached a simple message of repentance. The man’s name was John the baptizer (literally, John the washer). He announced that everyone, including those who had been Jews all of their lives, needed to be baptized. There were at least two things that were shocking about John’s message.
The first was that being good, being the right ethnicity, and having the right religion wasn’t enough. You still needed to be washed in the river. Abraham’s descendants got no exemption. Jews found themselves alongside gentiles in their need for this washing.
The second thing that would have surprised John’s audience was that this ritual bath was not something you could do for yourself. John, or one of his followers, did the washing. Being washed by someone else was a new twist on ceremonial washing – a humbling one. Only babies, toddlers, and the infirm needed someone else to bathe them. John was telling his audience that so did they.
John then adds a third twist. In the Gospel of John, chapter one, we read: “Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ They asked him, ‘Then who are you? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ Finally, they said, ‘Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’
John replied in the words of Isaiah, the prophet, ‘I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, Make straight the way for the Lord.’ Now the Pharisees who had come to question him, said, ‘Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ John replied, ‘I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. (In another Gospel, John says, I baptize with water, but he will baptize with fire and Holy Spirit).'”
John was using water to get the outer parts clean. The Messiah would scrub people clean, all the way down to their souls, by washing them with something more powerful than water.
Look at John chapter thirteen – “It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave the world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power. He also knew that he had come from God and was returning to God. So Jesus got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, using the cloth around his waist to dry them.
He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, ‘Lord, are you going to wash my feet?’ Jesus replied, ‘You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.’ ‘No,’ said Peter, ‘you shall never wash my feet.’ Jesus answered, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.'”
Notice what both of these passages make clear – it is Jesus who does the washing. It is not something we can do for ourselves or him. Like a child, we must let him wash us.
What does God do through baptism?
Through baptism, God marks us as his own. Baptism is like a tattoo on the heart that says, “This one belongs to Jesus.” Through baptism, God makes us a part of the community of faith.
In Acts chapter two, The Apostle Peter stands before the crowd and proclaims the message of salvation. Verse 41 tells us that more than 3,000 people responded and received baptism. From that point, they were a part of the community of faith. Baptism was the doorway through which people entered the church. That is why many ancient churches have the baptism font right as you walk through the door. Baptism is the entry point.
In 1 Corinthians 12:13, Pauls says we were baptized into the Body of Christ through baptism. In other words, through the waters of baptism, we enter into spiritual union with Christ and with all of his people.
Through baptism, God gives us all the benefits of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
In Romans chapter six, Paul captures the imagery of being baptized by immersion, literally being plunged beneath the water. He says, “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead to the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”
Now I am not saying that immersion is the only valid form of baptism. I will say some things about the other methods in a moment. But there is powerful symbolism in immersion. The idea of being buried with Christ, as we go down into the water, is powerful. We are then raised to life as we come up from out of the water.
By whatever method we receive baptism, it announces that we have died to the old life and have become a new person. The old life is gone, and a new life has been born. In ancient times, when clothing was very costly, people usually owned only one set. It was the practice of the ancient church to give the baptismal candidate a new set of clothes after they were baptized as a sign of the new person they now were.
Through baptism, God gives us the Holy Spirit.
In Acts chapter one, Jesus told his followers to wait in Jerusalem until they received the Holy Spirit. He said, “John baptized you with water, but not many days from now, I will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
And while the followers of Jesus gathered together in prayer, the Holy Spirit came with incredible displays of power. Peter uses the words of the Old Testament prophet, Joel, to interpret the event. In Joel 2:28, he says, “In the last days it will be that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” Notice that the one time Jesus performs a baptism, he chooses the method of pouring. And for this reason, the church uses pouring as one of the methods of administering baptism.
If the method of immersion emphasized death and new life, pouring emphasizes the giving and receiving of the Holy Spirit. The church also anoints with oil the forehead of the newly baptized. The pastor/priest uses the oil to make the sign of the cross. In the Old Testament, prophets, priests, and kings were anointed with oil as a sign of the Holy Spirit’s presence in their work.
Along with oil, we often give the candidate a candle. The candle represents the light of the Spirit. The family can light it each year on each anniversary of the baptism. The practice of remembering the anniversary of baptism is especially helpful for children who need ways of remembering and understanding the significance of their baptism.
Through baptism, God washes us clean from sin.
We get the word baptize from the Greek word “baptizmo,” which means to wash. We can see this meaning, for example, in Mark 7:4, where the word means washing food, pans, and eating surfaces. In the case of food and pans, one can imagine those things being immersed in water. But we know that table surfaces would not be.
“But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” – Titus 3:4-5
Ezekiel, writing about four centuries before Christ, looked forward to the redeeming work of the Messiah. In chapter 36, we read:
“I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all of your uncleanness, and from all your idols. I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit with you, and make you follow my statutes and to be careful to observe my ordinances.”
For centuries, the church has used sprinkling as a mode of baptism. Sprinkling reflects the ideas of Ezekiel 36 and projects the idea of the Holy Spirit sprinkling our hearts clean from sin.
I realize that some Christians think that immersion is the only Biblical way of baptizing, but it is not. Even the passage about Jesus receiving baptism is not clear about the mode of baptism. The passage says that after Jesus came up from out of the water, he received the Holy Spirit. But the wording in Greek is not precise. It may mean, “after coming up from under the water.” Or, it may mean, “that after being baptized, Jesus came walking up from out of the water.”
Methodists have never been strictly wed to one mode or another. We have simply focused on the meaning of baptism. We also emphasize the need all of us have for baptism.
Through baptism, God includes us in the New Covenant.
I will spend more time on this idea in my essay/sermon on infant baptism. Here, I only want to say that baptism marks us, and indicates that we are a part of the new thing God is doing in and through Jesus Christ. Baptism identifies us as being a part of the New Covenant community.
Why Methodists do not re-baptize
Misunderstanding the role of faith
Over the years, I have received many requests for re-baptism. The most common reason I hear for this request is that the person did not understand what was happening when they received baptism. This reason is especially common with people who were baptized as young children. Since they did not get a say in the matter, they now feel the need to repeat the event.
Sometimes it may be the case that the person felt pressured to receive baptism. Perhaps they were attending a Christian festival, and after the invitation, many of their friends rushed forward to accept Jesus and receive baptism. Group mentality kicks in, and soon the person is joining their friends, though he or she did not understand what any of it meant. Years later, this same person comes to have a personal faith in Jesus and now regrets being baptized before his or her conversion.
I also hear requests for re-baptism from folks who rededicate their lives to Christ. Why, in all of these scenarios, do these folks feel a need to have their baptism redone? They make the mistake of thinking that baptism is a witness to their faith. It is not. Baptism is a witness to God’s grace. Faith is the hands that receive this grace.
Besides, God never gets a baptism wrong. God can give that gift to us years before we know what to do with it.
The role of feelings
A person’s love for God can grow cold, and later that same person can have a new and exciting experience of grace. When this happens, some people decide to redo their baptism. Trying to redo baptism is a mistake. Baptism is the starting line of the marathon of faith. A race has only one starting line. Even if one of the runners stumbles, falters, or veers off course, she need not return to the starting line. She needs only to get back on track, where she got off track.
It is a common experience, as Christians mature in their faith, to discover pockets of one’s life that were never fully surrendered to God. Or, a maturing Christian may realize that he or she has not made God the highest priority in his or her life. At that point, many of these Christians will decide to rededicate themselves to God. Such a decision can be right on target. But it does not require being re-baptized.
To be re-baptized as a sign of rededication shows that we have missed the whole point. Let me use an everyday example. Perhaps I realize that I am not as committed to my marriage as I should be, what should I do? The answer is not to get re-married to my wife. No. The proper response is to correct what needs correcting. If I have not been showing enough affection, then maybe I need to try being more romantic. If I have been too distant or preoccupied with work, then perhaps the correction involves giving more time to my spouse.
If you need to rededicate your life to Christ, you are not required to go back to the starting line. You can’t re-run lap one. But you can run the next lap with more commitment.
In chapter 8 of Acts, we have the story of Philip going to Samaria to preach the message of Jesus and his kingdom. Many Samaritans believed the message and received baptism. But the change of heart that comes with conversion did not happen. Still, the leaders of the church were excited to hear about all that was happening in Samaria. So, Peter and John went to visit these new believers.
Somehow these believers had not yet received the Holy Spirit. My guess is that they were excited about the Gospel but did not fully understand it. Peter and John clarify the meaning of the Gospel for them. The Samaritans understand and are ready to receive the Holy Spirit. But notice. Peter and John do not re-baptize them. Instead, they lay hands upon them and pray for them to receive the Holy Spirit – and the people do. But after this full conversion, there is still no need for re-baptizing them. That part was finished. The gift was given. Now, by faith, they could take and appropriate it to their lives.